Location: Ljubljana / CUK Kino Šiška / Slovenia
Date: Tuesday, May 21, 2019
Die Ärzte are considered one of the mightiest rock’n’roll and punk rock exports of the German-speaking lands of the old continent. They were already all over BRAVO magazine in the first half of the eighties, when they were just starting their shiny career. So the memories and the nostalgia don’t fade, and over the years Die Ärzte have reached superstar status, which lets them fill up and sell out the biggest venues in Germany, Switzerland and Austria as a joke. Twelve studio albums, over seven million records sold across their career to this day, and a freshly released single, »Drei Mann – Zwei Songs«, which came out on May 1, 2019.
With the new tour called »Miles & More Tour«, Die Ärzte dashed through ten European cities in two weeks, including Warsaw, Prague, Zagreb and of course our very own Ljubljana! The news that they’d play the Ljubljana CUK Kino Šiška was a real surprise. A club exclusive, really, which? Was of course sold out in just a few days, and the tickets were of course snapped up in droves by the band’s devoted and loyal army of Austrian and German fans. That night the Slovenian attendees were just curious randoms, while the old Slovenian punk rockers were nowhere to be seen either, which, given that Die Ärzte are a bona fide punk rock legend and that this is also a truly exclusive show, is quite surprising, and that’s beyond the fact that, as a Slovenian, you first need to master German to really have fun at the band’s shows.
Anyway. The always punctual and extremely pedantic Germans hit the stage at exactly nine in the evening. Just as announced. Screams and a wave of rabid enthusiasm greeted their arrival on the Kino Šiška stage, and the band, with Farin Urlaub (orig. Jan Vetter) on guitar and vocals, drummer and unshakable “vampirologist” Bela B. (orig. Dirk Falsenheimer) and Chilean-born bassist Rodrigo González, who played with Bela B. in Depp Jones before the lineup was revived in 1993, greeted the crowd first in German, and then politely asked them to skip the “crowd surfing” this time for safety reasons.
The band delivered a marathon of more than three hours, mixing the most beloved songs (hits) of their career with old classics. They definitely played both new tracks from the freshly released mini EP too, namely Abschied and Rückkehr. Lots of talking between songs, with Bela B. and Farin Urlaub trading banter, is part of the well-oiled and obligatory folklore of their shows, and the crowd always waits for it eagerly and hungrily. These very interludes are a playground for firing off salvos of humor. The band scattered a pile of peace and reconciliation messages calling for acceptance of difference. Bras flying onto the stage is nothing new, and the band teased the crowd that the more girls there were “topless” during the show, the longer they’d play. The constant screw-ups, often theatrically deliberate too, and the long stretches with a completely out-of-tune guitar that practically screams at the tech to tune it, are something that would instantly bug a true music purist. But not true punk rock fans and die-hard Die Ärzte devotees in general, who simply demand such mannerisms from the band. Farin Urlaub will never learn to play guitar, but that’s exactly one of the eternal charms of this band. In the middle the band swapped instruments and Rodrigo cut loose with a very decent guitar solo. The band also surprisingly tackled Klaus, Peter, Willi Und Petra, which they hadn’t played live since 1985, while Tittenmaus was played by request, or rather from the crowd’s encore pick.
The devoted fans knew every single verse by heart. From the first row to the last. The entire sold-out hall at Kino Šiška. They followed the entertainment theater coming off the stage as if in a trance, which also had a bit of self-irony. Imagine Siddharta playing in Berlin and filling up, or rather totally selling out, a hall with 800 Slovenians. It was a perfect German punk rock party, and toward the end Farin Urlaub didn’t forget to ask the crowd how many Austrian friends were in it. A solid majority of course went totally up in the air and through the roof of the hall. About an hour into the show, there was a minor dropout. I noticed this completely by accident, because I happened to be outside the hall at that moment. Some twenty people left the venue. But not in a herd, rather sporadically, at ten-minute intervals. That was the mini handful of Slovenians who found themselves at a Die Ärzte show and apparently gave up.
The band came back on stage for no fewer than three encores and ripped through a total of 38 songs. Had there been less talking, the show would of course have been shorter, or there’d have been at least 50 songs. But theater and clowning have to be present at their shows. Truly an excellent, superior party, where the band doesn’t even need to put in any special extra energy, because the crowd drives the show all by itself. They reacted theatrically, letting loose and reliving the racket. The chemistry between Die Ärzte and the crowd was outstanding and one of a kind.
A show that was definitely one of a kind and something totally out of the ordinary for the standard rock and roll concert offering in Slovenia. An excellent show. The incredible energy of a charismatic and infectious trio. A club event with a truly big band. No joke, big. That’s what made this event at Kino Šiška something special, unique and quite likely unrepeatable. The Slovenian promoter’s invitation to the band surely paid off, and on that front it wouldn’t be any surprise at all if they invite Die Ärzte to Ljubljana again. A full-blooded switch-off of a show, cut according to the pure-bred German philosophy of punk rock perception, and one that’s surely worth coming to (at least once in your life) even if your German is full of holes.
author: Aleš Podbrežnik
photos: Aleš Podbrežnik
Setlist:
Portsmouth Sinfonia – Also sprach Zarathustra (intro from tape)
1. Rückkehr
2. Bravopunks
3. Wie es geht
4. Lied vom Scheitern
5. Wir sind die Besten
6. 2000 Mädchen
7. Ignorama
8. Ein Mann
9. Punkbabies
10. B.S.L.
11. Perfekt
12. Lady
13. 1/2 Lovesong
14. Sohn der Leere
15. Anti-Zombie
16. Tittenmaus
17. Der Graf
18. Himmelblau
19. Deine Schuld
20. Außerirdische
21. Fiasko
22. Angeber
23. Omaboy
24. Dein Vampyr
25. Klaus, Peter, Willi und Petra
26. Abschied
27. Heulerei
28. Revolution ’94 / Kopfüber in die Hölle
29. Schunder-Song
30. Ist das alles?
—encore I.—
31. Blumen
32. Westerland
33. Zu spät
…encore II.—
34. Schrei nach Liebe
35. Unrockbar
36. Junge
—encore III.—
37. Rettet die Wale
38. Dauerwelle vs. Minipli
Problemm o majhnem številu slovenskih obiskovalcev je pomoje bolj v tem, da so bile karte razprodane pomoje v treh dneh. V lajfu nisem videl da bi šle karte tako hitro. Vem, ker sem jo hotel kupiti en teden po tistem ko so šle v prodajo.
Upam, da še kdaj pridejo k nam in da jih končno ujamem v živo.
Stari presenečaš. V pozitivnem smislu valjda. Tud to sem razmišljal, da je gotovo eden vzrokov, da so nas nemškogovreči obsedenci enostavno prehiteli v internetnem nakupu vstopnic. Zdej pa resno vprašanje. A bi šu z mano na Jag Panzer 5.6.2019 na Dunaj?